


I'm Demon Proof, Baby

by Anonymous



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Doppelganger, F/M, Haunted Houses, Isolation, Suspense, Thriller, buzzfeed unsolved au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27125650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Arcadia Investigates is well into its fifth or sixth season, depending on how you count it, and Wilmington Hospital has been just begging for a visit.Clarke thinks it's very scary. Murphy thinks it's very fake.Bellamy and Emori are mostly just there to make sure someone gets some usable footage.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Emori/John Murphy (The 100), Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 45
Collections: Anonymous, Non Anonymous TROPED Collection





	I'm Demon Proof, Baby

**Author's Note:**

> This was ostensibly written for the Chopped horror challenge, but a) I can't write horror, and b) it's way too long, so here we are instead. 
> 
> My sincere apologies to BFU.

The hospital looms large against the night sky, a silhouette in the darkness that only swims into focus as the beams from their flashlights pass over it.

The windows on the first floor have been smashed out long ago—teenagers on a dare, probably, some sort of _hey, bet you can’t sleep overnight in the haunted hospital_ sort of thing.

_Or idiot film crews_ , Emori thinks, checking the battery on her handheld camera. _Always another possibility._

At any rate, the windows on the second and third floors are mostly intact, if a bit overgrown, except for one on the second story that’s got a whole tree growing out through the shattered glass.

Emori glances sideways and sees Bellamy Blake shooting a loving closeup of the morbid sight.

That’s her cue to focus in on “the talent”, as John chooses to refer to himself and Clarke Griffin, and she does so in time to see the other woman shudder dramatically at the hospital in general.

Emori’s never really been sure just how much Clarke believes in any of this stuff.

It’s distinctly possible that she’s only putting it on for the camera.

It’s also distinctly possible that she really does believe in all of it, in which case, Emori certainly isn’t dumb enough to say anything too dismissive on the record.

John usually takes care of that for the both of them.

As though he’s reading her mind, John turns to take a selfie with the hospital behind him, the flash from his phone momentarily lighting up the night sky, casting a weirdly elongated shadow on the crumbling wall behind him—

“I mean, yeah,” he says, and Emori pans her own camera over in time to catch Clarke’s expression as she glares at her cohost. “Visually, it’s all a little bit on the nose, don’t you think?”

When Arcadia Investigates first started up, Emori honestly didn’t think it would go very far.

It was only Clarke, after all—just Clarke, at first, and then Clarke and Monty—sitting in a recycled set on one of the unused soundstages, talking right down the barrel of the camera about what really happened to Amelia Earhart, or the truth about the JFK assassination—

But they’d been charming enough, in an amateur sort of way, and everyone loves a good mystery.

And so the show had picked up a bit of a budget hike—which mostly was to say that it now _had_ a budget, and Monty left to develop a gaming series over on one of Arcadia’s subchannels, and Clarke had talked Bellamy into helping her shoot, and he had promptly talked John into cohosting, and the series sort of took off from there.

They’ve got their own merch now.

It’s kind of ridiculous.

John, predictably, finds the show’s success equal parts baffling and amusing, which means he now wears the Arcadia Investigates t-shirts and sweaters and jackets and hats and pins every opportunity he gets, because the office dress code apparently just doesn’t apply to him.

(“It’s about maintaining an _image_ , Emori,” he’d said once with an almost saintly air of patience that made her want to punch him in the face. “You’ve got to think about the network’s _image_.”

“Arcadia doesn’t have an image,” she’d told him, and he’d just grinned, utterly unrepentant. “Also, we’re in a church, so maybe lose the pentagram hat before the priest gets out here, yeah?”)

Anyhow, now they’re five seasons in, and they’ve left the little soundstage behind long ago in favor of shooting on location and sleeping overnight in supposedly haunted buildings and filming John and Clarke while they bicker good-naturedly about whether ghosts exist or not.

People watch the videos as much for the vitriolic friendship between the main duo as they do for any real information on each new haunted site, and Emori texts John screenshots of the best comments she can find under each new video.

_they’re like a genderbent mulder and scully_ , someone named AImorelikeAWhy writes under their video on the Keddie Cabin Murders. _only with more sexual tension and less 90’s fashion_

John, predictably, finds this hilarious, too, and so he forwards her screenshot to Bellamy, and sends Emori screenshots of the other man’s pointed silence in return.

Emori doesn’t know that she’d call it sexual tension, to be honest.

Most days, she can’t shake the feeling that Clarke and John really, genuinely dislike each other.

Like right now, for example.

“You can’t be serious,” Clarke says, flashlight beam dancing wildly as she waves her arm to take in the hallway. “This is a literal waking nightmare, and you know it.”

“It’s not a nightmare,” John says, stubborn. “It’s peaceful and calm. It’s very relaxing.”

Clarke stares, and Bellamy rolls his eyes, and even Emori will concede that that’s maybe taking things a little too far.

The paint all around them is peeling off in long strips, and someone must have torn at the walls beneath, because there are claw marks splintering through the wood.

The cameras and flashlights provide a dim glow that fractures off of the broken windows, turning their shadows into bizarrely distorted shapes, and if she focuses, Emori can just make out the _tap, tap, tap_ of that stupid tree skittering its bare branches off of the second-story window.

It isn’t exactly what anyone would consider _relaxing_.

“Relaxing,” Clarke echoes, sounding stunned. “Exactly what part of this, to you, says _relaxing_?”

“I feel great,” John insists, as though Emori hadn’t filmed him picking his way down the hallway while complaining loudly about their odds of dying from tetanus. “This place is great.”

Privately, Emori suspects he’s not far off on that count.

Any time they shoot at an old location like this one, she’s a little less worried about the unquiet dead and a little more worried about the crew’s risk of lead or asbestos poisoning.

So far, they’ve been lucky, but she fully intends to stand the entire night rather than coming in contact with literally any part of the hospital’s floor.

“You’re ridiculous,” Clarke tells him. “I hope a ghost just freaking kills you.”

“To be fair,” John says, thoughtful, and leans in to inspect the words _get out get out GET OUT_ where someone’s carved them into the wall. “I’ve been begging them to do it for years.”

It’s a fair point, more or less.

When John had first taken up Monty’s place as the resident skeptic, his role had been only to provide some mild contradictions to Clarke’s more outlandish claims.

At the time, Emori had even been impressed by his restraint.

After all, not everybody could listen to another human being telling them, with a completely straight face, that the Roanoke Colony had disappeared due to a freak migration of the Bermuda Triangle and that the Triangle itself was now roaming the greater Atlantic Ocean—(“So it’s like a Roomba.” “Shut up, Murphy”)—with only a mild amount of sarcasm.

And John had seemed content to let everything but the most ridiculous theory slide, and the commentors had started complaining that the show had been better with Monty as cohost, because at least he’d challenged Clarke on her conspiracy theory tangents, and John was just _boring_ , and they might as well have two believers as cohosts, with all the arguments he raised—

All of that had stopped the first time they covered a haunted house.

Clarke had crept through the doorway, careful and nervous, voice barely above a whisper as she called out to “the spirits that may be lingering in this place”—

John had kicked the door open, loudly proclaimed that this was his house now, and gone on to announce that any lingering spirits who had a problem with that were cordially invited to yank out his spine like a ripcord.

Since then, Emori had had—slightly fewer opportunities to be impressed by anyone’s restraint.

The commenters loved it.

Of course they did.

It was over the top and admittedly pretty funny when it wasn’t horrifying, and it wasn’t like _they_ were the ones who had to stay in these places overnight, so for them it was mostly just hilarious—

“Aren’t you at all scared?” Emori had asked him one night, after he’d been laying on his back in the middle of a very poorly-drawn pentagram for the last half hour. “I mean, I know you don’t necessarily believe this stuff, but aren’t you ever scared?”

“Nah,” John said, giving the camera his best Clint Eastwood impression. “I’m demon-proof, baby.”

Bellamy had rolled his eyes so hard that he’d actually messed up his own shot, but Arcadia put the line on a t-shirt four weeks later, and John had been so proud of himself that he’d worn the shirt for a week straight until HR sent him a formal complaint begging him to change his clothes, at which point he revealed that he’d bought seven shirts, one for each day of the week—

“How do you even have the _funds_ for this?” Clarke had demanded, and Emori had mentally braced herself, because she knew what was coming.

“Really, Griffin,” John had said, impossibly smug. “Haven’t you been paying attention? It’s all about maintaining an image.”

“Okay,” Clarke says, fiddling with the device she holds in both hands. “If there’s anyone out there who wants to speak to us, maybe this will help.”

“A screaming radio,” John says, looking pained. “How could it not help?”

Clarke ignores him.

“This is the spirit box,” she says, and Emori zooms in on the little radio-looking device. “If you’ve been watching our show for more than a few episodes, you probably know how this works, but in case you don’t, it’s basically going to skip through a bunch of frequencies really fast, like tuning a radio.”

“Yeah, it’s like tuning a radio,” John says to the empty room. “You totally know what that’s like, don’t you? You human people who died in the 1800’s, you know how to tune a radio, right?”

“Shut up,” Clarke says, absent. “So this should give any spirits the energy that they need to communicate with us.”

“ _Should_ ,” John echoes, and then makes a show out of sighing, covering his ears. “Alright, let’s get this over with.”

It’s the closest thing AI has to a running gag, John’s ever-growing distaste for the spirit box.

At first, he used to just wince whenever it started up, and Bellamy and Emori have privately agreed that they don’t really blame him, because it does sound kind of ridiculous.

But the spirit box starts up with a shriek before spitting out a garbled mess of static and single syllables that have been chopped up beyond all recognition by the quickly-scanning frequencies—

It’s a distinctly unpleasant noise.

John rolls his eyes dramatically, and then briefly parrots the noise of the spirit box back at it, which would be funny if it weren’t so startlingly accurate.

He’s gotten pretty good at that since they first started using the box, and Emori doesn’t have any problem admitting that it kind of creeps her out, just a little.

Bellamy’s not bad at it, either, but John can actually mimic the choking, staticky sound that the box emits, and hearing the two noises going off at the same time is just so deeply weird that she almost tells him to stop—

The box beats him to it.

For one second, it’s just a cacophonic mess of sounds and syllables, and then the next—

_Stop it_ , a voice says, clear as day and certainly clearer than anything they’ve ever picked up on the spirit box before. _Stop making fun of me._

Emori doesn’t drop the camera, and Clarke doesn’t drop the spirit box, but everyone goes very still and very pale, and they all stare at each other in total disbelief—

John laughs and switches over to a near-perfect imitation of the disembodied voice.

“No,” he says, and Clarke gestures wildly for him to shut up. “Why don’t you come in here and make me?”

Confession time: Emori doesn’t believe in ghosts.

Not really.

Not totally.

She knows AI likes to keep a pretty steady balance between skeptics and believers, even for the behind-the-camera crew, so she doesn’t flout it as much as John does, because Bellamy’s already pretty skeptical, most of the time—

But if someone were to ask her, just come right out and ask, she’d say no, she’s pretty sure.

No, she doesn’t think ghosts are real, no, she doesn’t believe that the dead walk the earth, just looking for lights they can flip on and off or whatever.

But honestly—honestly—as sure as she is, she’s still only about 99.9% certain that ghosts aren’t real.

That’s a pretty high percentage, and most of the time, it’s more than enough.

But sometimes—

Sometimes—

99.9% still leaves that 0.1% uncertainty, and it’s never really been an issue before.

So yeah, Emori doesn’t really believe in ghosts, not enough for it to really matter.

(Confession time: in a pinch, 0.1% can still be more than enough.)

For one second, they’re all just standing around, staring at each other, too shocked to move.

Then the voice on the spirit box says, _Run_ , and everyone panics.

Emori sprints for the door before she even realizes what she’s doing, and Bellamy and Clarke are hot on her heels, and she can hear John shouting for them to wait, to come back, not to panic, just wait, just wait—

The door slams shut behind them, and his voice is gone.

Emori stumbles to a stop in the crumbling hallway, because it’s one thing to go stampeding off into the darkness and another thing entirely to leave their team member behind to—to what?

To die?

_No_ , Emori thinks, wild and frantic. _No, you’re just being dramatic, this is just a prank, it has to be—_

An inhuman shriek shakes the walls around them, and Emori whirls around, sees nothing but the shadows—

“Emori, come on, we have to go!”

Clarke grabs her arm, drags her another few steps down the hallway that looks a lot darker than it did just a few minutes before—

The walls are shaking.

The walls are shaking, and they left John behind, and it has to be a joke, this all has to be some kind of a joke—

“I’m right behind you!” Emori promises, and she wrenches her arm free, because she’s never liked people grabbing for her bad hand out of the blue like that—“I’ll be right there, I just have to go back—”

She’s just going to grab John real quick, and then they’ll catch up with the others.

John will think this whole thing is hilarious, of course.

She’ll go back and get him, and he’ll be laughing his head off about the looks on all of their faces, and don’t they know how easy it is to broadcast over an open frequency?

It’ll be fine.

Everything will be fine.

Clarke opens her mouth to say something, probably to argue—

“I’ll be right there,” Emori says again. “I’ll meet you guys back in the lobby, just go!”

Clarke gives her one more look, doubtful.

“Go,” Emori says, and Clarke pulls Bellamy away, takes off running down the hallway that seems to twist and warp even as she watches—

Emori watches.

She watches them go, she’s literally watching them, and the hallway is just a straight shot, she can see the lights from Bellamy’s camera—

But she blinks once, and the light vanishes, and Emori realizes, quite suddenly, that she is alone in the dark.

She doesn’t panic.

Of course she doesn’t.

She has a little more sense than that.

“This is just a prank,” she says out loud into the darkness that surrounds her on every side. “This is all just some super-elaborate prank, and it’ll be ridiculously embarrassing when whatever prank show airs and everyone sees us all freaking out.”

There is no response from the shadows.

On one hand, it’s a relief.

On the other hand, it’s not as much of a relief as she thought it would be.

At any rate, she just has to go back a little ways.

Just a little ways, and then she’ll be back in the room where John still is.

They must have slammed the door behind them in their mad dash to escape the room.

It’s all perfectly logical.

Everything makes a perfect amount of sense.

Emori stretches out one hand until her fingertips bump up against the peeling paint on the wall, and then she begins to make her way back along the hallway, moving slow and careful the whole time.

She’s still got her camera, and the little circle of light slides out ahead of her, showing a few feet at a time, and she’s got the wall on her left, so it’ll be fine.

She’s totally got this.

Emori takes one careful step, and then another, and the light slides easily over the warped and rotted floorboards.

After ten paces, she thinks that she should be coming up on the door soon enough.

They didn’t really run that far, after all, and the hospital itself isn’t exactly enormous.

After twenty paces, she slows down even further, counts her breaths and counts each additional step.

Another twenty paces, and she’s thinking that this might be a problem.

She walks for ten minutes, hand pressing hard against the horrible, splintering paint, and the door is nowhere to be seen.

For the first time, Emori pauses, pushes even harder into the wall, and allows herself to think the word _lost_.

There has to be an explanation.

Everything that happens, it happens for a reason, right?

So there has to be an explanation for what’s happening now.

As soon as she realized that the door was—missing, Emori immediately dismissed any thoughts of going back to find Bellamy and Clarke.

She’s walked for ten minutes in the wrong direction, and if there’s something going on—something that makes the hallways hard to navigate, something that could have gotten her so badly turned around that she somehow missed the giant freaking door—

If that’s the case, then there’s no point in trying to retrace her steps.

She only has so much battery life, after all.

Once the camera light dies, she’ll be on her own in the dark, really and truly, and she’s not super ready for that, not just yet.

So she keeps going.

The wind howls strangely through the broken windows, and Emori makes a mental note of the sound, thinks that at least she knows she’s still on the first floor.

Of course she’s on the first floor.

Where else would she be?

“Stupid,” Emori says out loud, and shakes her head to try and clear it. “Come on, focus up.”

They’re her brother’s words, borrowed and only half-remembered, and Emori regrets them at once.

Before she can think about why, she nearly trips over something on the floor, lying in the middle of the hallway where she’s drifted away from the wall.

It should have been in her circle of light.

She should have seen it.

Emori crouches, picks up the spirit box, and does her level best not to shiver.

_I know why_ , the box says, in the same voice as before, and Emori nearly drops the thing, but manages to catch it just in time. _Don’t you want to know how I know?_

“No,” Emori tells the box, and gives it a little shake. “Shut up.”

The voice in the box laughs, and she checks the back of the box, confirms that the power is switched off, and then tosses it back into the darkness beyond the quickly-fading light from the camera.

The box won’t stop showing up.

Emori’s been walking for what feels like an hour, and she’s thinking she definitely should have found some sort of an exit by now.

Instead, the hallway keeps marching forward, no end in sight, and so does she, out of sheer necessity.

Her feet are starting to hurt.

She’s also starting to entertain the possibility that this might not be a prank.

“Ghosts aren’t real,” she says as she walks. “Like, that’s a fact. They’re not real.”

_Are you sure about that?_

The voice comes from right behind her, and Emori jumps, but then she rolls her eyes, squints through the darkness, and sees the spirit box sitting on a shelf that juts out of the wall.

Based on the angle, she should have almost certainly split her head open when she walked past it, but she hadn’t, which means that it wasn’t there, and she’s honestly not even surprised anymore.

“Stop following me,” she tells it, and the spirit box laughs.

She wishes it would quit doing that.

It sounds a little too much like John when it laughs.

Dimly, she’s aware that she should probably get some footage of this, since she doubts either she or Bellamy got any useful footage out of the initial conversation, so she points her camera at the box, punches up the brightness on her flashlight.

“Who are you?” she asks, in her best on-camera voice. “Do you know what’s going on here?”

The box is silent.

Well, not _completely_ silent.

It’s skipping through radio channels again, and the only discernible sound is a far-off chatter that still sounds way too much like laughter.

“Fuck you,” Emori says, and she turns on her heel and keeps walking.

_Turn left,_ the box calls after her, and she shines her camera light through the door that’s just appeared on her left, sees the yawning chasm that opens up right where her feet would be, and rolls her eyes again.

“Pass,” she says. “Thanks.”

The box hums a little, and she can’t tell if it’s more disappointed or amused.

Either way, the sound cuts off suddenly, but when she looks over her shoulder, she can still see the red power light blinking on and off in an endless cycle.

The hallways are getting steeper.

It wasn’t really noticeable, not at first, just a little bit of a burn in her thighs to let her know she was walking uphill.

But that was—some time ago.

Emori isn’t sure how long.

That was some time ago, and now she's leaning pretty heavily on the walls as she goes, needs the support to keep forcing her way forward.

_Slow down_ , the spirit box says from her backpack. _There’s no rush. Slow down_.

Emori grits her teeth.

“You know,” she can’t help pointing out. “You kind of showed your hand with the whole bottomless pit thing back there.”

The box is, for a moment, blessedly silent.

“I mean,” Emori says, and shrugs. “If you wanted to trick me up, you’d give me some good advice and then build up to the bottomless pit. Instead, you opened with that, and so now I already know I can’t trust you for shit.”

The box is still silent.

If she didn’t know better, she’d think the thing in the box was mulling it over.

Then, like it’s sulking, the voice says, _I could be telling the truth._

Emori scoffs. “Real convincing,” she says. “You may want to work on your pitch a little bit.”

The box is silent for a few more minutes.

The hallway splits in two up ahead, and Emori hesitates for a moment, shines her flashlight to the left and then to the right.

_Go right_ , the box says, still sulking, and Emori inspects the floor for any signs of a hidden trapdoor before mentally shrugging, taking one careful step to the right—

A gust of cold air hits her face, and she almost smashes the box off the wall before she catches a glimpse of the view through the broken window, and she understands what it means—

On the other side of the window, she can see the parking lot.

On the other side of the window, she’d be safe and sound, she just needs to find a way through to the other side—

_See?_ the box asks, still sounding vaguely offended. _I can tell the truth._

“Yeah, yeah,” Emori says, and inches her way down the corridor, ready to drop everything and bolt at the first sign of trouble. “Forgive me if I don’t count it a habit just yet.”

Despite ostensibly taking instructions from a disembodied voice inside of a powerless radio, Emori isn’t actually an idiot.

Like, one good bit of advice is hardly enough to make her blindly trust the thing wholeheartedly, so it's not like she's going to plunge headlong down every corridor that the voice points out.

No, she's definitely going to be cautious, of course she's going to be cautious.

But if the path that the box indicates seems to be even remotely accurate, then that's safe, right?

As long as she knows that it could be a trap?

Emori breathes out, tries not to think about how flawed that reasoning is.

Because, yeah, it's pretty obviously flawed.

But whatever. It's not like she's got any better options.

_Turn left_ , the box hisses from its spot on her back. _Turn left._

Emori weighs her chances. It's been a while since the thing last tried to trick her—that would be about twenty minutes ago, she'd guess, the right turn that would have pitched her straight down a flight of stairs—so she figures the odds are probably pretty good.

But there's a malevolent note of glee in the voice that filters through the spirit box, and that's not good, right?

That's pretty obviously not good.

Emori looks down the left corridor, spares a quick glance back towards the right.

"Alright," she says. "And you're sure you're giving me the right choice here?"

_Of course_ , the spirit box whispers. _Would I ever lie to you?_

"You're a real comedian, Casper," Emori says. "Alright, fine, I guess we'll give it a shot."

_My name is not Casper._

"Filing that under Who the Hell Cares and moving on."

She makes it six steps past the doorway before the floorboard collapses under her feet, and she doesn't even have time to scream before she falls straight down.

_(Somewhere far away, Before—_

_"Aren't you ever scared? I mean, I know you don't necessarily believe this stuff, but aren't you ever scared?"_

_"Nah. I'm demon-proof, baby."_

_"What on earth is that supposed to mean?"_

_"Don't worry, you'll figure it out. Why?"_

_"What?"_

_"Are you?"_

_"Am I what? Scared?"_

_"Sure."_

_"No. Not really. I mean, sometimes. But not really, no."_

_"Good. That's good."_

_"Is it?"_

_"Sure.")_

When Emori wakes, her ankle is completely busted.

She manages to pull herself to her feet, but as soon as she tries to put any weight on it, a burst of pain stabs through her leg, and she has to bite down hard on her tongue to keep from crying out.

Leaning hard against the wall, she pulls her backpack around to her side, roots through it until she finds the spirit box, and then hurls it at the wall with all of her strength.

It shatters, but she doubts that'll last very long.

"I've had about enough of you, Casper," she tells it anyhow, and then tries to figure out where she is.

The light on her camera's getting dimmer, there's no doubt about it.

That's only fair.

It's been turned on for a good long while now.

She really shouldn't have expected it to last forever.

"Okay," she says out loud. "So let's just see how far we can get before then, I guess."

It's—painfully slow going.

Briefly, Emori considers the fact that, if she _should_ somehow luck her way into finding Bellamy and Clarke, there's a not totally insignificant chance that they'll both attack her on sight if she comes lurching her way out of the darkness, looking all kinds of zombified—

There's nothing for it, though.

She'll just have to keep going.

She wishes she had a cane or something.

Something to lean on other than this ridiculously cliché splintering wall.

John may have been right, she thinks, with a numb attempt at humor.

They’ll all die of tetanus or lead poisoning before anything truly haunting takes them out.

God, but where _is_ John?

Emori wonders if he’s somewhere nearby, doing the exact same thing as she is and wandering in great, unending circles.

She wonders if she’s passed him without even knowing it.

From somewhere far behind, she hears a clicking, scuttling noise, like pieces of machinery slotting into place, and knows it’s only a matter of time before she gets another bit of great advice from the miraculously revived spirit box.

Emori shakes her head to clear her thoughts, and she just keeps walking.

By the time the camera light starts to flicker, Emori’s found the writing.

At first, it gives her hope, because it’s proof that her friends are (mostly) alive, that they’ve gone the same way as she has, that maybe she’s on her way to finding an exit.

But then the writing starts to—change.

_Bellamy Blake_ is the first thing she finds carved into the walls, and a little bit below that, _Clarke Griffin._

It’s just a marker, a kind of _Kilroy-was-here_ gesture, in case anyone comes that way looking for them.

(Emori’s so relieved to see it that she doesn’t notice the date.)

Another ten minutes, and she sees the same scratched-out letters, just _Bellamy_ and _Clarke_ this time, and the date below it is—wrong.

The year’s right, so that’s good, and so is the month.

But the day—

_10/22_ , someone—probably Bellamy—has written. _10/22/2020_.

There’s no way that Emori’s been wandering around for two days.

It’s been hours, sure, but not two days.

_Surely_ it can’t have been days.

Emori fights hard to keep a superstitious chill from working its way down her spine.

She’s only partially successful.

She’s been saving her phone battery for whenever the camera light finally gives up the ghost—there’s no coverage here, because of course there isn’t, but at least she can use the flashlight for an hour or so—but she fishes her phone out of her pocket now, takes a picture of the date and the names, and tells herself that she’ll show it to Clarke and Bellamy after, ask them what the hell happened to them—

The flash lights up the narrow hallway, and Emori very carefully doesn’t look around.

She feels, rather than hears, the laughter from the spirit box, and she doesn’t look away from the writing on the wall.

When she starts walking again, it’s only another hundred yards or so to the next message.

Emori has to lean in close for this one, because her camera light is really starting to go incredibly dim, and she doesn’t dare try and adjust the brightness.

So instead, she ends up with her nose nearly pressed up against the carefully-etched words, and then she sees what they say and she wishes she hadn’t bothered—

_10/27/2020_ , the shivery, scraggly letters read, and then— _Clarke is gone._

The writing gets worse from there.

It starts as a mere collection of dates, each one increasingly hard to believe, except for the way that some of the dates are worn and faded with age.

There’s a date a week from now—a month from now—two months, then five, then a whole year in the future—

Emori presses the back of her hand against her mouth and breathes in slowly, carefully, trying not to scream.

The last date is nearly thirty-five years in the future, but it’s far from the last message.

It’s only the last date.

From there, Bellamy starts leaving messages—real messages, not just a collection of days, years, and months, and Emori hates what she’s seeing.

Suddenly, with an almost visceral rage, she hates this stupid hospital, hates whatever creature is lurking in the spirit box, hates John for taunting the voice that they couldn’t see—

_Clarke left_ , Bellamy writes. _Clarke left me behind._

It took him thirty-five years to start blaming her.

And even then, it seems like he blames himself more.

In a way, Emori supposes, it’s almost sweet.

Mostly, though, it’s just horrific.

_Clarke left me behind_ , he writes, and then, there, just a little bit below that— _what did I do?_

_What did I do?_

_I’m sorry._

_I didn’t mean to—_

From there, things get a little bit less coherent.

_I’m sorry_ overlaps with _please come back_ and _where are you_ and _I never stopped looking_ , and Emori can almost pinpoint the exact moment that he stops blaming himself and starts—whatever the rest of the other messages are.

He hates her—hates all of them—hates them all for leaving him in the dark, leaving him alone in the dark without even a flashlight.

The words dissolve into mindless curses, scrawled verdicts and rantings and hateful, unseeing promises.

Emori brushes her fingers against one of the more visceral notes, sees the red tinge to the letters, and realizes that the handwriting is the same as the _get out get out GET OU_ T that they found just inside the doorway, a lifetime ago, earlier tonight.

It was Bellamy.

Before they even knew the danger they were in, he’d tried to warn them—

Emori thinks about a conversation she had with John once, years ago now.

_Well_ , she thinks, and if the spirit box even thinks about chiming in, she’ll tear it apart with her bare hands. _Well, there’s your answer._

_(“I just don’t get the whole appeal of the poltergeist thing, honestly.”_

_“How do you mean?”_

_“Well, like, people are mostly the same, right? In real life, I mean. Like, yeah, there are some really bad people out there, but for the most part, everyone’s just trying to do their own thing and leave everyone else alone.”_

_“Okay.”_

_“So why does that supposedly go away when people die? Like, if you were just a normal person in life, and then you die, why does that suddenly change you into a spooky, Paranormal-Activity-style, pull-people-up-into-the-ceiling and scratch-up-their-backs type of ghost?”_

_“Well, first off, the bad guy in Paranormal Activity was a demon, so—”_

_“John.”_

_“No, I know. Maybe it’s just—time.”_

_“Time. You think that’s all it takes?”_

_“To turn a person into a demon or to turn them into a ghost? Because technically, if Clarke is right, it only takes a second to turn a person into a ghost—”_

_“Alright, fine, forget I asked.”_

_“I think you’d be surprised what time can do when you’re stuck somewhere in the dark and you’re all by yourself.”)_

The spirit box is back in her backpack again, and the camera’s light is gone.

Emori thinks she maybe should have turned the light off earlier, because her eyes are just starting to adjust to the dark, and that means she can actually see a little further down the hallways, which means that the spirit box has been mostly quiet instead of offering her crappy advice—

A sudden thought strikes her as she limps along down the hallway, and she fights hard to keep her voice steady.

“You’re not Bellamy,” she tells the spirit box, but it comes out more like a question. “You’re not Bellamy, are you?”

The spirit box is silent for a moment.

Then it says, _I could be._

“No,” Emori snaps. “No, this is not a Black Widow, who-do-you-want-me-to-be conversation. I’m asking you, yes or no, are you now or were you ever the person I knew as Bellamy?”

Again, the box hesitates, and Emori can’t tell whether it’s hesitating because it doesn’t want to answer or just because it’s mulling over which answer will confuse or frighten or freak her out the most—

_No_ , it says at last, sounding sullen and sulky again. _I am not Bellamy_.

“Well, thank God for little miracles, I guess,” Emori says. “You’re sure about that?”

It’s not like the box has got a great track record when it comes to giving honest answers.

_Yes_ , the box says, and no doubt about it, it’s definitely sulking now. _Yes, I’m sure_.

Well.

At least that’s something.

She can practically feel the box gearing up for another hateful little comment, so to cut it at the pass, she figures she might as well try an older question.

“Who are you?” Emori asks, and the camera’s fully off by now, so it shouldn’t have a problem answering—

_Who are you?_ the box asks in her own voice, which wasn’t really something she needed today. _Tell me your name_.

“Ansel,” Emori lies, thinking about a fairytale she vaguely remembers from when she was a kid, going through her _fairies are all secretly evil and you have to trick them or they’ll eat your life_ phase. “Why, what’s your name?”

_Ansel_ , the box says, smug and knowing, like it’s an inside joke. _I’m just my own self, too_.

So it’s a literate ghost.

That’s just great.

“Think I liked Casper better,” Emori tells it, and the box hums like it’s annoyed, but it doesn’t speak again, and so she goes limping along without asking any further questions.

But at least it’s not Bellamy.

At least they’ve all been spared the indignity of that.

So really, she guesses, it could somehow still be worse.

Emori doesn’t jinx herself even further by saying that out loud, but the spirit box switches over to a quiet, off-key whistling, and she can’t shake the horrible feeling that it may have somehow heard her, all the same.

She never finds Bellamy.

Or Clarke, for that matter—Clarke’s got to be around here somewhere.

Unless she isn’t.

She wouldn’t have left Bellamy behind unless she thought she saw her way clear to the exit, Emori tells herself, and almost manages to convince herself that it’s the truth.

For all of John’s joking and needling of the pair, there’s a trust and respect between the two of them that goes beyond basic workplace flirting.

She wouldn’t have left him behind.

Not unless there was no other way.

But Emori’s been walking for what feels like six or seven hours, if she had to guess, and she knows that this place can play tricks on the mind, on the body, on the way that time seems to alternately stretch and contract, like some enormous creature breathing in and out—

If Clarke only thought she saw her way out, if what she saw was just another trick, another trap—

_She got out_ , Emori tells herself sternly. _She got out, and Bellamy will, too, and you’ll get out eventually, you just have to find John_ —

She never finds Bellamy.

She never finds Clarke.

Once, way down at the end of the hallway, she sees someone moving, slow and bent nearly double with age, and there could be something about the way the figure stands that’s familiar, there could be something about the movement that stirs some sort of recognition—

The figure turns its head to look at her, and then it lurches away into the darkness, and before she can make her voice work to call after it, it’s long gone.

Once, she’s passing an open doorway, and the spirit box hisses at her to turn left, turn left, _turn left right now_ —

She doesn’t.

Instead, she looks into the doorway and sees the shadow of a woman who leans on the wall and limps slowly, painfully away, the light from her camera just starting to flicker.

Emori doesn’t panic.

She doesn’t scream or try to run, the way she thinks that the box may have wanted her to do.

But she doesn’t call out to the other woman, either.

Instead, she stays very still and very silent, and she knows—she knows—that the other woman will dismiss any noise as feedback from the spirit box, and so she stands in the doorway with her hands pressed over her mouth to avoid making any sound at all.

Just in case.

Just in case.

Okay, but seriously, where the _hell_ is John?

Whatever’s happening to Bellamy and Clarke is horrific, obviously, and she more or less knows what’s going on with her whole situation, but shouldn’t she have seen _some_ sign that John exists—existed—was around here, somewhere, at some point?

Bellamy left his little hate mail love notes, couldn’t John have left some sort of _wish you were here_ kind of carving along the way?

Emori glances up at the windows on either side of her as she picks her way down the hallway.

They’re not broken anymore.

She must have gone up, then, without even noticing.

She must have somehow climbed up a flight of stairs without even knowing she was doing it.

God, but she hates this place.

She really, really does.

Her ankle hurts so badly, and she’s _tired_.

Walking for eight hours would be exhausting at the best of times, even if she were going at her usual pace, and with her ankle twisted and in her Professional Camera Crew clothes, it’s really just absolutely ridiculous.

She could rest.

She could just sit down here on a relatively un-rotted portion of floor and rest for a while.

Maybe the sun will come up, eventually.

She kind of doubts it, though.

With the windows whole and no longer broken, she doesn’t even get the breeze from the world outside the hospital, can’t even catch glimpses of the night sky beyond.

She’s—trapped.

She’s been avoiding using the t-word, just because of the finality of it all, but there’s really no way around it, is there?

She’s well and truly trapped.

Emori eyes the floor ahead of her, wonders what would happen if she sat down, just for a little while.

_Just for a little while_ , the box agrees eagerly. _It wouldn’t hurt to rest, just for a little while_.

_And then there’s that_ , Emori thinks, weary.

In case she was starting to forget why resting would be such a bad idea.

She looks up again, hoping against hope for some sort of _EXIT THIS WAY_ neon sign, and she isn’t exactly surprised when no such beacon reveals itself.

If she finds an exit, she thinks, with a sudden, horrible understanding, she’s taking it.

John can find his own way out.

It’s not like what Clarke did, she tells herself.

It isn’t.

Clarke left Bellamy in the dark by himself.

Emori’s been in the dark by herself all along.

So if she leaves— _when_ she leaves—when she finds a way out—it won’t be the same at all.

At the end of the hallway, there is a noise.

Emori lifts her head from where she’s sitting, slumped against the wall, and she doesn’t know how long it’s been since she heard anything at all.

Honestly, she’d take the creepy doppelganger version of herself, at this point.

Just to have another person to talk to.

The spirit box _really_ doesn’t count.

Emori pushes herself to her feet, ignores the way her muscles seem to groan in protest, ignores the wave of pain from her ankle that nearly knocks her flat again—

Someone is standing at the end of the hall.

Someone is standing at the end of the hall, back to her and arms hanging loose at their sides, and Emori almost breaks every internal vow she’s ever made to not be the white girl in a horror movie and almost does something really stupid like calling out _hello?_ or _who’s there?_

The spirit box whirs with excitement.

_Told you I’d find him_ , it whispers, and Emori ignores the fact that it hasn’t told her that, not exactly.

When she’d sat down, it had been full of vague promises and empty assurances that if she just kept walking, they’d be sure to stumble across John eventually—

_Told you I’d find him._

_John_ , Emori thinks, and hates herself for the way her heart floods with hope, so sudden that it’s almost painful.

He looks as lost as she is, just standing there at the end of the hall with his head hanging low, still not turning around, still not looking back at her.

“John,” Emori calls, and lurches down the hallway towards him, desperate and halfway to terrified by this sudden, awful hope. “John, are you alright?”

It’s been hours—it’s been longer than that—it’s been so long since she’s seen anyone at all, let alone the one person she’s been looking for—

John slowly turns around, and Emori nearly stumbles at the sight, because his face is perfectly blank, perfectly uncomprehending, without even the slightest glimmer of recognition—

“John,” she says, and doesn’t know what to say to follow it up—

He tips his head to one side, face still completely blank—

A hand closes around her wrist, yanks her to one side, and she yelps at the pain that stabs through her ankle—

“Don’t talk to it,” John says, from half a foot away, face pale and worn in the darkness that looms between them. “Don’t even look at it. Just—don’t.”

“John,” Emori says, and when she follows his gaze, she sees he’s staring at his double with a wariness that almost borders on reverence. “What—”

“Come on,” he says, as the double turns slowly around to face the wall once more. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

It’s only been ten minutes.

It’s only been ten minutes since they all ran out of the room, and Emori grabs at John’s wrist, pulls it closer so she can see the hands on his watch, and it doesn’t make sense.

“To be fair,” John says, mild. “I _did_ tell you all not to panic.”

Emori glares at him.

“Maybe cool it with the _I told you so_ until we’re all out of here, yeah?” she snaps, and he shrugs, like it’s no big deal, which makes her wish that her glare was a little bit more effective.

But she can’t quite make herself let go of him.

Not just yet.

“Fair enough,” he says, and his eyes dart to her ankle, swollen grotesquely so that her foot rests at an odd angle. “But you’re—you’re okay, right? I mean, other than the obvious? You’re alright?”

“Other than the obvious,” Emori allows, and when he looks at her like he’s trying to make sure she’s telling the truth, she mimics his shrug right back at him. “I’m still standing. I’m still moving. It could be a lot worse.”

“Yeah,” he says, and she sees him scanning her over when he thinks she won’t notice, like he has to check for himself, just to be sure. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Emori realizes she’s still clinging to his wrist, and she starts to let go, but John rolls his eyes, tugs her a little bit closer so that he can pull her arm around his shoulder.

“I’d have brought a pair of crutches if I’d known,” he says, off her look. “But you’ll just have to deal with this until we get out of here, okay?”

“Okay,” Emori says, because she can’t think of anything else.

John’s taller than she is, and Emori tries to stand a little bit taller, because she knows it can’t be easy, slouching down like that to let her lean on him.

But he doesn’t say anything, and it is a lot easier than leaning against the wall and picking up splinters and chipped paint and God only knows what kind of weird communicable diseases—

So she leans on John, and they pick their way through the darkness like they actually have a clue where they’re going, and in her backpack, the spirit box is silent for the first time in hours.

(It’s only been ten minutes.)

Either way, the spirit box is mercifully silent, like it doesn’t dare speak up anymore, and later, much later, Emori will think that that should have been her first clue.

It only takes them another ten minutes to escape.

It only takes ten more minutes, and Emori isn’t sure whether she wants to laugh or cry when the front entrance finally swims into view, and she can feel the cool air from the parking lot outside, and then the door flies open as they both stumble into it, and it isn’t until she swipes her hand across her eyes and it comes away wet that she realizes she’s somehow doing both at once.

They made it out.

They made it.

“We’re okay,” John’s saying over and over again, and Emori is sort of distantly aware that she must be fully hysterical if he’s feeling the need to try and calm her down like this. “It’s alright, we made it, we’re okay—”

Her ankle doesn’t hurt anymore.

Her ankle doesn’t hurt, and Emori looks down, sees that the hideous swelling has vanished.

She puts her weight on it, tentative, and there’s no lightning-shock of pain, no nausea from the dull aftershocks that follow.

“My ankle,” she says, and John glances down, looks somehow unsurprised to see it perfectly whole once more. “I don’t understand—”

“It’s only been twenty minutes,” he says, like this is a perfectly logical explanation. “How long were you in there before you twisted it?”

“A few hours,” Emori says, automatic, and then frowns. “But that doesn’t make sense.”

“You were only in for twenty minutes,” John says. “Not a few hours. So it didn’t happen.”

It doesn’t make sense, but she’s hardly going to complain.

“Okay,” she says, and laughs again. “Okay, fine. Whatever. Makes total sense to me.”

John shrugs again, but he looks like he’s halfway to laughing, too, so she doesn’t take her arm from off his shoulders, doesn’t pull away or try to get some space.

The AI van is the only car in the parking lot, and they head that way, and Emori’s still leaning on John, but he doesn’t seem to mind too terribly much, so she’s not going to bring it up, either.

The van is locked, but Emori’s got a key in her backpack, somewhere, fishes it out with a desperate, exhausted sense of triumph.

It isn’t until she’s unlocked the car, is halfway into the front seat, is just about to toss the key to John and tell him to get them both the hell out of there that she remembers—

All at once, she remembers, and the wave of guilt that sweeps over her is almost enough to send her reeling once more.

Clarke and Bellamy are still inside.

Somehow, impossibly, she’d forgotten.

She’d forgotten, but she remembers now, and the horror of it is enough to make her sick—

The two of them, they’ve made it out.

They’re safe.

They’re free.

But Clarke and Bellamy are still inside.

“We have to go back,” Emori says for the fifteenth time, and John groans, slumps over the steering wheel and mutters something that she can’t quite make out. “John, we can’t just _leave_ them in there, we have to go back—”

“Do you have any idea how lucky we were?” John demands, still talking pretty much directly into the steering wheel. “I mean, do you have any idea how lucky we were to get out in the first place?”

“It only took you ten minutes to find me,” she insists. “If it takes us that long to find Bellamy and Clarke, we can be back out here in less than an hour.”

“That’s a pretty big _if_ , Emori.”

“You managed alright the first time,” she points out, and frowns. “How _did_ you get out so quickly, anyhow? How come you weren’t wandering in circles like the rest of us?”

“ _Luck_ ,” he says, bitter and false. “I’m just really, really lucky.”

“Then it won’t be a problem going back in.”

“ _That’s_ your takeaway?”

“They wouldn’t leave us!” Emori says, and hopes like anything that that’s actually true. “If we were still stuck in there, and Bellamy and Clarke made it out, you really think they’d just leave us behind?”

“Clarke would,” John says immediately. “She’s smart like that.”

He’s probably right.

“Okay,” Emori says, and deliberately doesn’t think about Bellamy’s notes, scratched into the walls. “Okay, but Bellamy wouldn’t. You _know_ he wouldn’t.”

That makes John hesitate.

He peels his forehead up off the steering wheel, glares at her, and then turns his glare towards the hospital that doesn’t look any less scary now, for all that they’re sitting safely on the outside.

“John,” Emori says, and tries to make her voice sound softer, more persuasive, with only partially successful results. “John, you _know_ Bellamy wouldn’t leave us behind. How can we just abandon him in there to die?”

John’s still staring at the hospital, and Emori doesn’t think she can push it any further, not without overplaying her hand and tipping him in the wrong direction—

For a long moment, neither of them speak.

Then John swears viciously, shoves the door open, and climbs out in a fit of frustrated exasperation.

“Well?” he shoots over his shoulder, and Emori scrambles to get her own door open, wonders if he’d accept a thank you if she said it casually enough. “Aren’t you coming?”

Despite her insistence, it’s one thing to say _we have to go back_ and another thing entirely to be standing in the doorway, looking up at the lobby and those all-too-familiar hallways beyond.

“Alright,” John says, doubt clear in his voice. “Alright, but we have to stick together, alright? No matter what you hear or see or whatever, we can’t go running off in different directions.”

_Run_ , the spirit box chimes in eagerly, so much quieter than before, like it’s worried John will hear it. _You should just run. Get away from him while you still can—_

“Shut up,” Emori tells it, and then, off John’s look, “Not you.”

He glances between her and her backpack, but doesn’t ask, and she can practically feel the box hunkering down inside her pack, hiding among her meager supplies.

“I mean it,” he says, apparently choosing to ignore the whole situation. “We can’t split up.”

Emori rolls her eyes. “If you wanted to hold hands, John, you just had to ask.”

“I don’t—that’s not what I meant—”

She slots the fingers of her good hand through his, and he shuts up.

“There,” she says, and he’s too busy staring at where their hands interlock to come up with any clever commentary. “That work?”

“Sure,” he manages, and she would laugh at him, but she can’t quite make herself do it, not now. “Yeah, sure, that works.”

Emori’s been looking at him to avoid looking up into the hospital, but now she takes a deep breath, forces herself to focus.

They can do this.

They’ll make it out again.

She finds herself thinking of a bunch of prayers that she could’ve sworn she’d forgotten years ago, and maybe she’ll give those old mantras a try, once they’re inside.

Couldn’t hurt, right?

“Okay,” she says instead, and tightens her grip on John’s hand without really meaning to. “Okay, we can do this. We can do this.”

“Not like we have a choice,” John says, but he’s a little softer than his usual sarcastic tone, so she decides she’ll let it slide. “Ready?”

She’s not ready.

She still wants so badly to turn and run back to the safety of the van, to drive until the sun comes up and they’re so far away—

“Ready,” Emori lies, and takes the first step back into the hospital, so that the spirit box burbles something that almost sounds like a laugh, and John has to stumble a little to catch up.

After that, the spirit box won’t freaking _shut up._

It keeps up a near-constant stream of commentary, whispering little tidbits of bad advice and extremely unhelpful suggestions.

_Turn right_ , it hisses, and when John—as if he can hear it—immediately takes the door to the left instead, it gives a frustrated, electric whir and snaps at her to leave him, _leave him behind, you can’t trust him—_

_I can’t trust you_ , Emori thinks, but doesn’t say, because she doesn’t want to explain the fact that she’s talking to the disembodied voice on their spirit box to John.

Either way, she’s not throwing the box away.

John seems to know where they’re going, and so as long as she ignores what it’s saying, the spirit box is still the most expensive piece of equipment they’ve got on the show, and she’s sure as anything not going to be the one to destroy it now.

_Don’t_ , the box whispers as John pauses in one of the halls, looks both ways before opening a door that wasn’t there a second earlier. _Don’t follow him, you can’t—don’t let him see. I don’t want you to see—_

Emori thinks that she’s probably going to have to deal with this, sooner or later.

But again, John seems to know where he’s going.

He hardly hesitates at each new fork in the road, and he’s walking out ahead of her like he can see in the dark, like he’s not at all worried that each floorboard is a Sumatran pit trap just waiting to happen—

“How do you know where we are?” Emori asks at one point, and ignores the chittering laugh that comes from the spirit box.

John glances briefly at the backpack, but then he shrugs, doesn’t press the issue.

“Just a feeling,” he says, and shrugs again when she looks at him. “I mean, it worked before, right?”

_Don’t trust him_ , the spirit box whispers, and Emori ignores it resolutely. _Don’t trust him—run, just run—_

Once, they have to stop dead in their tracks, and John pulls Emori into another doorway, and they stand stock-still, hardly breathing at all, as a figure that could be John or could be Bellamy moves slowly past them in the hallway, sniffing loudly, like it’s tracking their scent.

The spirit box crackles a little, and Emori closes her eyes—

John reaches around her, plucks the box out of the top of her backpack and shakes it once, and it goes silent in an instant.

The figure moves past without any further interest, and they stay where they are until it turns the corner at the end of the hall and is lost to sight.

John sighs, steps out from the doorway, and he still hasn’t let go of her hand, but he holds the box out towards her, and she fumbles it a little with her bad hand, manages to tuck it back into her backpack.

In the low light through the broken windows, all she can see are his eyes, glinting palely as she tugs her backpack shut once more.

Emori waits for him to ask about the box.

“We’re getting close,” he says instead, turning to go and pulling her after him, and the spirit box makes a noise that almost sounds like crying.

It takes them fifteen minutes to find Bellamy.

The spirit box has been mostly silent since John handed it back to her, but as they go, it starts to make a whining noise, high-pitched and irritating, and Emori thumps her backpack once to try and shut it up, which makes John huff out a laugh, but has no other real effect.

So the spirit box keeps whining, and Emori shakes her head, tries to ignore it.

“We must be almost there,” John says, conversational, and the spirit box pauses for a second before resuming its noise. “If that thing’s acting up.”

They haven’t seen any movement since the figure that forced them to hide in the doorway, and there’s an awful chill to the air, like something around them is holding its breath.

“This hospital,” Emori says, feeling suddenly childish and uncertain. “It’s not, like—alive, is it?”

To his credit, John doesn’t dismiss it immediately.

“Not the hospital,” he says, thoughtful. “Just something—in the hospital.”

“Oh,” Emori says. “If that’s all.”

He laughs a little at her tone, but it’s more out of politeness than anything else.

“I thought you didn’t believe in this stuff,” she can’t help pointing out, and he scoffs.

“Does that matter?”

“I guess it doesn’t.”

The spirit box’s noise is reaching an almost painful pitch, and if this was just another AI episode, Emori knows that John would be all kinds of dramatic about the noise, grumbling and complaining and doing his best to drown it out—

Now, though, he just clutches her hand a little bit tighter, walks a little faster, and Emori isn’t going to bring it up if he won’t.

Up ahead, there’s a shape on the floor, another bundle of old hospital supplies and old rags like the ones she’s nearly tripped over at least fifteen times now.

The spirit box gives one last miserable shriek, and then it falls silent once more.

John pauses, looks at the Emori’s backpack with an air of mild surprise, and Emori understands, all at once—

She clamps her free hand over her mouth to keep from being sick on the spot, and John just crouches down in front of the bundle, pulling her with him to kneel on the filthy floor.

“Hey, Bell,” he says, quiet as she’s ever heard him, and Emori watches, breathless with horror, as the pile of rags and skin and bones shifts until Bellamy peers between the two of them through eyes clouded white with age.

Bellamy is— _old_.

It feels inadequate, that word.

He’s so old, so frail and so unlike himself that Emori finds herself blinking back tears for what feels like the thousandth time.

“Murphy,” he rasps, voice paper-thin, and he can’t quite make himself focus. “Murphy, what the hell happened to you?”

“Funny,” John says, and he’s still using the softer voice that sounds so impossibly wrong, coming from him. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

“Emori’s looking for you,” Bellamy says, like each word is being dragged out of him. “I tried to go back—we tried to find you—”

“Emori’s right here,” John says, and Emori waves helplessly. “We’re going to get you out of here, alright?”

They just have to get him out to the parking lot.

It’s the same thing as her ankle, Emori tells herself.

It’s only been thirty-five minutes or so, once he gets out of the hospital, everything will be fine, he’ll be back to normal, he won’t be—this.

They just have to get him out of here.

Everything will be fine.

“Bellamy,” Emori says, and his gaze drifts over to her, unseeing, unthinking. “Do you have any idea where Clarke is?”

For a second, she wishes she could take it back, because she’s remembering the notes she found before, when she was alone with her camera and the spirit box, and there’s a chance he’s still as angry as he was then—

But perhaps those notes belonged to a different Bellamy, or perhaps it’s just been so long that he doesn’t have it in himself to hate her anymore, because he only shakes his head, slow and ponderous and so sorrowful that it makes her throat hurt.

“She’s gone,” he says, like a confession. “I tried to find her—I tried to follow—she’s gone.”

Clarke wasn’t outside.

She wasn’t waiting for them out in the parking lot, the way Emori had almost believed she would be.

She’s just— _gone_.

It’s unacceptable.

“We’ll find her,” Emori promises, and John says. “Don’t worry, we’ll get her, too.”

They manage to pull Bellamy to his feet, and he’s so light, so impossibly light, so that Emori is almost afraid that he’ll blow away before they ever reach the door—

She has to let go of John in order to get an arm under Bellamy’s shoulders, and it shouldn’t feel like so much of a big thing, but it does, it really does—

“We have to find Clarke,” Emori says, at the same moment as John says, “We’re running out of time.”

The spirit box makes a noise that could be a laugh or could be another sob, and they start off down the hallway once more with Bellamy hanging weakly between them.

They can’t find her.

It’s been another half an hour, and they can’t find Clarke.

John’s getting frustrated, Emori can tell.

He keeps moving like he knows the way, but there’s a lot more pausing at each new crossroad, and twice now, she’s heard him muttering things like “doesn’t make sense” or “should be this way”.

Now that his focus is on their path, the spirit box apparently feels safe enough to start its whispers again.

_Just leave her_ , it insists. _Leave them both. Don’t listen to him—_

Emori grits her teeth, shoulders a little bit more of Bellamy’s weight, and ignores the little voice that’s hissing in her ear.

_Just go_ , the spirit box says, a few minutes later. _You don’t need them. Listen to me, I’ll make sure you get out on your own_.

_Shut up_ , Emori thinks, but doesn’t say.

At least Bellamy doesn’t seem to hear the voice.

His lips are moving constantly, but no sound comes out, and he seems mostly convinced that this is all another dream, that he’s going to wake up and be huddled back in that hallway once more.

“We’re almost there,” Emori promises him, when he manages to mumble something about not wanting to wake up. “We’re almost safe, it’s okay.”

She’s never been good at being the one to offer vague, reassuring platitudes—neither has John, for that matter, but they’re both trying, and that’s got to be enough, right?

_Not safe,_ the spirit box says, equal parts sorrowful and delighted. _Just stay here. Just wait a little while longer—_

“That’s enough,” John snaps, and the spirit box goes quiet again, but he’s stopped in his tracks and is glaring hard at Emori’s backpack. “Seriously, what’s your deal?”

Emori doesn’t blame the box for shutting up.

She thinks she’d probably quiet up real quick, too, if it was her on the receiving end of that glare.

“Here,” John says, and shoulders the majority of Bellamy’s weight, jerks his chin at her backpack. “Take it out?”

Emori fishes the box out, and it’s shaking in her hands, little red light flashing violently.

“What is your problem?” John demands, and the light flashes even quicker, but the box still doesn’t answer. “Why do you keep trying to hide the path?”

Emori blinks, startled. “What do you mean, it’s hiding the path?”

“We should have found her by now,” John says. “The—whoever’s talking through the box, they’re not strong enough to misdirect us, not entirely, but they’re trying—why don’t you want us to find her?”

Emori looks at the box, and for a long second, she thinks it won’t answer.

But then, in a voice that’s barely above a whisper—

_It won’t matter_ , the spirit box says. _It’s too late. You don’t want to see—it’s too late._

Emori doesn’t understand.

“ _Oh_ ,” John says, sounding sick with realization. “Oh, _shit_.”

Emori doesn’t understand—

“Clarke,” John says, and the light is flashing so quickly that it’s an almost-constant glow. “Clarke, what happened to you?”

Clutched tightly in her shaking hands, the spirit box begins to weep.

“There’s nothing we can do,” John says, and Emori glares at him.

“We’ve already been through this,” she snaps. “We’re not leaving them behind.”

“Clarke is _dead_ ,” John snaps right back at her. “This isn’t like your ankle, this isn’t like Bellamy being old, this isn’t something I—isn’t something the hospital can undo.”

“We have to find her,” Emori insists. “If she died after days, and we take her back out—”

“It’s not the same!”

“How do you _know_ that?”

John laughs, but there’s no humor in it at all.

_I’m sorry_ , the spirit box says. _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry—_

“Listen to her,” John says. “She’s looping. There’s nothing left for us to find.”

“We have to try,” Emori says. “John, please, even if it’s only her body—her family deserves that—Bellamy deserves—they have to know.”

Bellamy is sitting against the wall, legs tucked up under his chin, like a child, and he’s holding the spirit box in both hands while it sobs.

“Emori,” John says. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Emori says. “No, that’s not an option.”

“Emori—”

“Time works differently here,” she says. “We know that. We can’t just leave her—trapped.”

She doesn’t know how any of this works.

She doesn’t know whether it’ll help, getting her out of here, doesn’t know if it’ll do anything to the voice that’s trapped in the box.

But she can’t just walk away.

They have to at least _try._

“Clarke,” she says, and the box is silent for a moment, choked off from its endless loop of breathless apologies. “Why did you lie to me? Before, why did you want me to fall?”

_I didn’t want you to fall,_ the box—Clarke—the voice that used to be Clarke says, and Emori can’t help but feel a little bit frustrated.

“Then why—”

_I didn’t want you to leave._

John closes his eyes, and Emori nods.

She goes over to the wall, pulls Bellamy back up to his feet and drapes his arm over her shoulder.

“We’re not going to leave you, Clarke,” she promises, and looks over her shoulder to where John is standing with his eyes still closed. “You don’t have to come with us.”

But she starts down the hallway, and a second later, John is there, pulling Bellamy’s weight back to himself and grumbling the whole time about people who don’t know how to leave when they get the chance.

When they find Clarke, she isn’t dead.

She’s slumped against another damn wall, the paint around her stripped away in long, splintering claw marks, and the notes that Bellamy left are love notes compared to the words scratched around Clarke’s head.

Emori sees her own name at least a dozen times, and Bellamy’s at least a dozen more, but it’s John’s name—Murphy’s name—that takes up the most space.

_Don’t leave me_ , one message reads. _Don’t you dare leave me—_

They’re not nearly all that tame.

Most of the notes are hard to read, because there’s one final message, written over and over and over in dark red letters, smeared across the wall from floor to ceiling—

_GET OUT OF MY HEAD_

Somehow, Bellamy finds the strength to pull away from John and Emori.

“Clarke,” he says, and drops to his knees in front of her, clasps her hands in his, begging. “Clarke, it’s alright, we’re here. We’re going to get you out of here.”

She doesn’t move.

Emori joins him, pulling Clarke away from the wall, finding the pulse that beats weakly in her throat, and John just watches them.

On the ground where Bellamy dropped it, the spirit box is silent.

“Clarke,” Bellamy says again. “Clarke, please, please, just talk to us—”

“Let me talk to her,” John says.

Bellamy can’t quite move fast enough to glare over his shoulder, but he manages to get the same intention across pretty well.

“I think you’ve already said enough,” he says, sounding so much like his old self—his young self—that if they were anywhere else, Emori might laugh.

“No,” John says, and Emori looks back to see his gaze tracing over Clarke’s last message, eyes still visible even when the rest of his features are lost in the shadows. “Not her.”

Emori looks back at Clarke, still and unmoving on the ground.

“Josephine,” John says. “Josephine, we need to talk.”

And Clarke moves.

Clarke sits up, opens her eyes, looks right past Bellamy and bares all of her teeth in a grin.

“John,” she says in a voice that Emori has never heard before— _get out of my head get out of my head get out of my head_ —“It’s been such a long time.”

“ _What the hell is happening?_ ”

“Please,” John says, sounding impossibly tired. “Guys, please, can we not?”

Emori scrambles to her feet, and Clarke rises effortlessly, gracefully—no, not Clarke, this is not Clarke, it’s someone else—something else— _Josephine_ , John had called her—called it—

Josephine stands easily, smiles coldly between the three of them, and Emori pulls Bellamy up beside her, knows they’ll never make it if they have to run—

“I’m going to need the body back, Jo,” John says. “Clarke’s around here somewhere, she just needs the body back, and we’ll be out of your hair.”

“Aw,” the creature named Josephine says through Clarke’s borrowed teeth. “But I was really starting to get used to this one.”

“Then find another one,” John says. “I’m sure you have people coming through here all the time.”

Josephine pouts.

“But this one’s so _pretty_ ,” she says, and her gaze slides over to Bellamy. “Honestly, you should see the things that one thinks about her when he thinks he’s the only one in his head.”

“Yeah, we all know that,” John says, dismissive. “Believe me, that’s old news. Seriously, you can’t have this one. Find someone else.”

Josephine taps one finger against her chin, thinking it over.

“You want this one back?” she asks, and flashes another brilliant smile. “Then I guess we’d better make a deal.”

“Absolutely not,” John says at once, and Josephine laughs—

_Don’t trust him._

_You can’t trust him._

_How do you know where you’re going?_

_How did you get out the first time?_

_How come you weren’t wandering around—_

_Aren’t you ever scared?_

And Emori understands.

Finally, _finally_ , she understands.

“What kind of a deal?” she asks, and Josephine’s borrowed eyes snap over to meet hers.

“Emori,” John says. “Emori, _wait_ —”

“What kind of a deal?” she asks again, and Josephine almost laughs again—she can see the motion start, deep in Clarke’s throat, before the demon chokes it back, settles back against the wall and spreads her arms wide.

“Oh, you poor, stupid thing,” she coos, and Bellamy is nearly shaking beside her. “Where do we even begin?”

_The way it works is like this: there’s always something to trade._

_People make deals all of the time, and most days, they don’t even notice it._

_It can be something little—a few hours of your time, a few memories that you won’t even notice once they’re gone, the way your fourth-grade teacher sounded or the way you felt after your first perfect tennis match—_

_There’s always something to trade._

_When people get a little more worried, they make bigger trades, of course, but those are less and less common, these days._

_Really, it’s all a matter of reputation._

_But there are cases—_

_There are still cases—_

_It’s usually parents, to be perfectly honest, a worried mother or father, come creeping up to the crossroads, ready to make a deal—_

_The truly desperate trade for lives._

_It’s usually family, and that makes sense, doesn’t it?_

_A life for a life, or one life for many, and really, you’d have to be desperate to make a crap trade like that._

_In the end, the desperate always trade for lives._

_It all works out._

_These things always work out the way they’re supposed to._

_There’s always something to trade._

“Emori,” John says, and there’s a note of panic in his voice. “Emori, wait, just think about this, don’t be stupid—”

“Oh,” Josephine says, and looks between the two of them. “Oh, that’s _interesting_ , isn’t it?”

“Josephine, don’t,” John says, and his voice has changed, somehow, so that Emori barely recognizes it at all. “Just let Clarke go. You don’t have to do this.”

“Is this you begging, John?” Josephine tips her head to one side, considers him. “It’s really not a good look on you, I’ve got to be honest. Do you _like_ her?”

It’s such a juvenile question, so childish and reductive, and Emori almost laughs out loud.

She doesn’t though.

She can’t.

“That’s really a shame,” Josephine says, smug and condescending. “You know, really, John, we’ve been around the block a few times, I would’ve thought you knew better than to show your hand like that.”

“Josephine,” John says, and it looks like it’s killing him where he stands, but he drops his gaze, takes half a step forward. “Jo, _please_.”

“I’m in an _awfully_ good mood,” the creature in Clarke’s body muses. “You caught me in a really good mood. So how about this—how about a fair trade?”

“No,” John says. “No, Jo, don’t—”

“A life for a life,” Josephine snaps. “Her life for everyone else’s.”

“No deal,” John says, but Emori is sick of hearing her life be bartered, like she doesn’t get a say of any of this, so she asks, “Everyone else?”

Josephine’s eyes are back on hers once more, still smiling so wide that the corners of Clarke’s mouth are starting to bleed.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she says. “You think you’re the only ones trapped in here?”

All at once, Emori can hear it—hear the calls and cries and desperate, terrified sobs of what must be dozens of others—those stupid teenagers who wandered in on a dare, ghost hunters and property inspectors and city auditors—

There are so many of them.

There are so many voices.

Her life for everyone else’s.

Emori leans against the wall, the way she did when her ankle twisted beneath her.

A life for a life—a life for all the other lives.

Objectively speaking, it’s a really, really bad deal for Josephine.

But she’s grinning, grinning far too wide, and John is standing too close, way too close, saying something about how stupid this is, surely she’s not actually considering it, come on, Emori, be smart about this, you have to be smart about this—

_Focus up_ , Emori tells herself sternly. _Come on, focus up._

“It’s such a pity,” Josephine says, cruelly triumphant. “Really, John, you know I can’t help them—neither can you. Not unless _someone_ makes a deal. We have to play by the rules, don’t we?”

There’s no way out.

There’s no other way out.

_We have to play by the rules_ , Emori thinks, and once again, she almost laughs out loud.

“I want to make a deal,” she says. “My life for everyone else’s.”

“No,” John says, like he can’t think of any other words. “No, wait, _please_ —”

Josephine says, “There’s a good girl, I was sure you would—”

“With John,” Emori says. “I’m dealing with John. A life for a life. Deal or no deal?”

_So here’s the other thing about how this all works: everyone always has to play by the rules._

_There are rules for this sort of thing, of course there are._

_There are rules for the rest of the time, too, or else everything would just be—madness._

_Out of control._

_So there have to be rules._

_Of course there have to be rules._

_“I can’t help them—neither can you. Not unless someone makes a deal.”_

_That’s the thing, about victory._

_When you think you’ve won, that’s when you’ve got to be really, really careful._

_Because if you’re not careful—_

_If you don’t think really, really hard about what you’re about to say—_

_That’s usually when you say something really, unbelievably stupid._

_There are rules, for this sort of thing._

_We all have to play by the rules._

“Don’t,” John says. “Emori, please, _please_ , don’t make me do this—”

“That’s how it works,” Emori says. “Isn’t that how it works? You can’t help unless someone makes a deal?”

“Please,” John says again, barely above a whisper. “Please, just think this through.”

“I don’t trust her,” Emori says, nodding over at Josephine, whose face has gone white with breathless rage. “Not to get our friends out. Not to let anyone else go.”

They’re all standing too close—Bellamy and John and even Clarke, what’s left of Clarke, the body that used to be Clarke—and Emori knows that this is the way out.

This is the only way out.

“You can help,” she tells John, and smiles like that’ll make everything okay. “If I make a deal, then you can help.”

“Emori—”

“I trust you,” she says. “You’ll get them out. Deal or no deal?”

“You can’t do this,” Josephine spits. “I made the deal first! I was the one who gave her the idea—”

“You didn’t make a deal,” Emori snaps at her. “You only set the terms.”

And John finally gets it.

She can see it on his face, the moment he understands, and he still looks furious and helpless and terrified, but she thinks there might be a little part of him that’s impressed, too.

Just a little.

Just a very little bit.

“No,” Josephine snarls. “No, you can’t—”

“You set the terms,” John says. “You _agreed_ to the terms. Emori for—for everyone else. Everyone else who’s trapped here—including Clarke—”

“Deal or no deal?” Emori asks again, and Josephine’s face twists wildly, blood dripping from the corners of her torn mouth. “John, deal or no deal?”

“Deal,” he says, and before she can back out, before she even has time to be afraid, he catches her hand in his, eyes flashing gold, and she shakes his hand—

She shakes his hand—

“No!” Josephine shrieks, and she lunges at them, skin peeling back from her bones, grasping claws reaching out, reaching—

Emori shakes his hand, and the world around her begins to scream.

_(“Are you?”_

_“Am I what? Scared?”_

_“Sure.”_

_“No. Not really. I mean, sometimes. But not really, no.”_

_“Good. That’s good.”_

_“Is it?”_

_“Sure.”)_

The world crumbles around them.

Later, Emori remembers bits and pieces of the fallout—Josephine lunging at the three of them, the way the bones of her fingers tore the flesh from John’s throat, the scream she hadn’t been able to keep inside, the way Clarke had shrieked—

Clarke is there.

Somehow, impossibly, Clarke is there, between them, the way she was before, and Josephine is forced back, fingers pried loose, and everyone is shouting, shouting, _shouting_ —

And then—

_And then—_

Everything is silent.

_Everything is silent._

Out in the parking lot, the sun is only just starting to rise.

The sky is shot through with pink and white, the clouds cold and icy blue, somewhere high above.

The light stretches long fingers through the frosty air, touching each last crystal of ice and turning it to gold.

Bellamy checks the battery in his camera. “Nothing,” he says, and huffs in exasperation, holds the camera away from himself.

“Completely wiped. Like, why did we even bother?”

Clarke leans on his shoulder to check the playback.

“That doesn’t make sense,” she says, and when she shivers this time, it’s not for the cameras. “I mean, I could’ve sworn we got at least _some_ footage.”

The parking lot is full.

There are so many cars—so many cars—dating back nearly half a century, old classic cars still in pristine condition, broken-down relics that were out of date long before they ever entered the lot, bright and shiny and modern cars that still have the engine running—

The drivers mill about uncertainly, and Bellamy eyes a few of them suspiciously, like he’s thinking he should probably shoot some of this, since it’s not like they’ll be able to get an episode out of the nonexistent footage from the previous night.

They don’t remember.

None of them remember—not Bellamy, not Clarke, not the other drivers who are slowly getting back into their cars, shaking their heads like they’re trying to clear away a dream.

None of them remember.

As the cars start to pull out of the lot, some of them disappear.

Just—there one second, gone the next, like they’re blinking through the space between two moments in time, vanishing without a trace.

One by one, until the only car left is the old AI van, and Clarke places the spirit box back in its case, closes it up with only a vague sense of regret at not getting any useful audio.

“We should leave in the next ten minutes,” Bellamy says, and he’s got a funny sort of ache in his back, but it fades, too, until he feels the same as always. “No point sticking around here any longer, right?”

None of them remember, none of them remember, except—

Emori watches Bellamy and Clarke load the equipment back into the van.

She feels a shiver that has nothing to do with the early morning cold, and she rubs her hands uselessly against her arms.

But the other two don’t notice, and so she turns and walks away before they can see and call her back.

She’s standing in the park outside the hospital, a tangle of rosebushes that was swallowed up by the weeds long ago, when John comes to find her.

She doesn’t hear him approach, so she’s just standing with her arms crossed, whispering a prayer that she only vaguely remembers—her brother and herself, repeating the tired-out words every night while their mother looked on, approvingly.

“What is that?”

Emori jumps at the quiet question, spins around to see John standing in the entryway to the garden, and he waves one hand kind of awkwardly to indicate the words she’s been chanting under her breath.

“Oh,” she says. “Just—a prayer. Mom used to make us say it every night. Before we went to sleep.”

John nods, and he doesn’t laugh at her.

That’s good.

She doesn’t think she could handle it if he laughed at her.

“Will you teach me?” he asks, and she scowls.

“Does that really matter now?” she asks, and he shrugs.

“No,” he says. “No, I guess not.”

Emori nods, watches her breath puff out into the cold of the early morning air.

“Why do I remember?” she asks, and John sighs, long and heavy.

“You made a deal,” he says. “I’m sorry. But you made the deal. So you have to remember.”

It makes sense, she supposes.

She nods again, rubs her arms uselessly, and wishes she didn’t feel like shaking.

She made the deal.

It was worth it.

It had to have been worth it.

Emori thinks again of the cars that drove so slowly out of the lot, about Bellamy and Clarke, bickering good-naturedly as they finish loading the van.

_It was worth it._

_It was worth it._

John doesn’t rush it.

He stands beside her, but he doesn’t say a word, and finally the light has started to fade from the garden, has started to turn from gold to the regular glow of a clear morning.

Somewhere far away, Emori can hear Bellamy and Clarke looking for them.

They shouldn’t have to see this.

She should go before they see.

“Alright,” Emori says, and John glances sideways down at her. “Whenever you’re ready.”

John doesn’t say anything at all.

“Just—tell my parents,” she says, feeling her throat start to close up, despite her best efforts. “Okay? Tell them—something, I don’t care what, but tell them something good.”

“Emori,” John says, and she shakes her head, because she really, really doesn’t want to cry.

It was worth it.

It had to have been worth it.

“You’ll make it quick,” she says, like it’s really a question. “You’ll make it quick, yeah? I trust you, you won’t—it won’t hurt. Will it?”

“Emori,” he says again, and she can’t handle the way his voice has gone all fond and soft around the edges. “You don’t—”

“Come on,” Emori says, and she turns to look up at him. “Come on, let’s just get this over with.”

John looks at her for a long moment. Then he nods once, slow and deliberate, and Emori’s going to be brave about this, she’s absolutely determined to be brave—

“Emori,” John says, one more time, and if she didn’t know better, she would almost swear he was trying not to smile. “What the actual hell are you talking about?”

“You’re a _bastard!_ ” Emori snaps, and hits him again, but he manages to catch her wrists between fits of laughter, flat on his back in the tangle of weeds that make up the garden floor. “You’re an absolute _bastard_ , and I can’t believe I was going to let you talk to my _parents_ about this!”

John’s nearly crying from laughter, and she would hit him again, but her heart is racing a million miles an hour, and she feels dangerously close to laughing herself.

“You’re just not a very good negotiator,” he manages, once he’s calmed down enough to speak. “You should have specified when the deal was going to take effect—”

“I _assumed!”_ Emori really doesn’t feel like this is something she should have been able figure out on her own. “I _assumed_ it meant immediately, you couldn’t have shared this little tidbit of information sooner?”

“Well, you know what they say about assuming—”

“Don’t you _fucking_ dare, John!”

John looks close to laughing again, but he lets go of her wrists instead, pushes himself up off the ground, leaning back on his elbows and grinning up at her where she sits half on top of him.

It probably says something that her first response upon learning she wasn’t about to die was to tackle him to the ground and do her level best to beat the life out of him, but Emori’s not going to examine it that closely.

“How does seventy years sound?” John asks, overly innocent, and she glares at him. “That should be a good deal, don’t you think?”

“I can’t believe you,” she tells him. “What the hell is wrong with you. Why are you like this.”

He scoffs.

“Think of it as a gift,” he says, reasonable and smugly superior as always. “You just got your whole life back, doesn’t that feel good? Don’t you feel glad to be alive?”

“I feel like I want to hit you again,” she says.

“That’s fair.”

John jumps to his feet, pulls her up after him, and then tips his chin in the general direction of the parking lot.

“Come on,” he says. “Bellamy and Clarke will be waiting. Don’t suppose you feel like getting out of here?”

**Comments** 6.3K

**AIMoreLikeAWhy** • 24 minutes ago

hey guys loved this episode, great work as always! just wondering, are we ever going to see the episode yall shot at the wilmington hospital??? would love to see some variety in locations going forward, thanks! #askAI #clurphy #Griffindors #teamcockroach

**169 Replies**

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**Arcadia Investigates** • 10 minutes ago

Unfortunately, our investigation at the Wilmington Hospital didn’t turn up a lot of useable footage. Keep watching our channel for updates on future locations! Clarke.

Wilmington Hospital was even less convincing than normal, and Clarke didn’t want to admit that her haunted hospital theory had literally no proof. Also, stop tagging #clurphy, it’s creepy and it makes our camera guy angry. #murphamy #teamcockroach. Murphy.

“ _Wait_ ,” Emori says, some time later. Bellamy and Clarke are sleeping in the backseat of the van, and the highway lights are just starting to flicker on ahead of them, and John is sitting in the passenger’s seat with his feet up on the dash, picking over a bag of jelly beans that have probably been in the van since the Reagan administration.

“ _Wait_ ,” John mimics back in her own voice, and then glances sideways at her. “What’s up?”

“So what was all of that back there?” Emori asks, and waves her hand to indicate the abandoned hospital that vanished in the rearview long ago. “All of the _Emori, no, don’t_ and _don’t make me do this_ and all that jazz? If none of it mattered?”

John tosses a jelly bean in the air, tries to catch it in his mouth, and then has to hunt around on the floor when it bounces off his chin and rolls under the seat instead.

“ _Emori_ ,” he says, chiding and impossibly patient, and she understands at once. “Haven’t you been paying attention?”

“Oh, God.”

“It’s all about maintaining an _image_ ,” he says, and she groans. “An image is all a person has, these days.”

“I’m not sure you really fit the criteria,” Emori grumbles, and he shrugs, unoffended.

“Well, it’s all the rest of us have got these days, too.”

“The rest of us,” Emori echoes, and they drive a few more miles in silence.

Then a thought occurs to her, and she grabs the bag of jelly beans out of his lap just so that she can chuck it at the side of his head without looking.

“What was that for?” he demands, like they don’t both know that he could’ve dodged it, no problem.

“That shirt,” she says, fuming. “Was that stupid shirt a joke?”

John sniffs, but she can tell he’s proud of himself for that one.

“It’s not my fault they put an extra hyphen in,” he says, so smug that she holds out her hand until he passes her a jelly bean, and then she throws that at him, too.

“Just wasting perfectly good food,” he says, cheerful, and fishes it out from beneath the chair.

“You’re lucky I’m driving,” she says, and he laughs out loud.

Clarke and Bellamy don’t wake, though, and so they keep driving as the night grows dark around them and the streetlights come on, one after another, to light the rest of their way home.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the-most-beautiful-broom for proofreading, editing, and providing all the information that this needed!


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